The last few years have been troubled for the Gnome Project. Once a premier desktop environment for Linux, it has seen its market share diminish amid user dissatisfaction over Gnome 3 and accusations that the project was ignoring users. Yet, over the last six months, something important has been happening: Slowly and quietly, the members of Gnome have started trying to turn the situation around.

These days, security and privacy issues are increasingly making the news, but where can the average free software user learn more about safer practices? One of the best answers I have found is Tails, a Debian-based distribution that seems as much about teaching users to make informed decisions as about the software itself.

Could Mozilla’s announcement of the Boot to Gecko roadmap, along with the continued development of other web-based operating systems, make which Linux distro you’re running less important than the desktop environment?